Downtown mural nears completion

Holly Strayer talks about two mosaics being created in downtown Chambersburg.
Vicky Taylor, Public Opinion

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Members of the community work together to complete a mosaic with the help of Isaiah Zagar on Staurday, July 16, 2016 outside of Main Street Deli in downtown Chambersburg.(Photo: Noelle Haro-Gomez, Public Opinion)Buy Photo

Zagar, who is in town this week to help almost three dozen volunteers create two outdoor mosaic murals downtown, said that when he leaves at the end of the week, those volunteers will have developed the skills they need to finish the second mosaic themselves.

"This town is an amazing town, filled with amazing people," he said Sunday as he drew some final details at the top of the mural that covers almost the entire wall on the north side of Main Street Deli.

Isaiah Zagar glues a piece of tile onto part of a muralc being created on the wall outside of Main Street Deli on Satueday, July 16, 2016 in downtown Chambersburg, Pa. Zagar will be creating two mosaics in downtown.(Photo: Noelle Haro-Gomez, Public Opinion)

As he climbed a ladder and added finishing touches to the top of the mural, volunteers continued to work on other parts of the creation, cementing pieces of tile and mirror in the part of the drawing he created on Friday and Saturday.

Zagar said he was inspired by young gymnasts from the Wilson College School of Gymnastics who performed Saturday in the nearby Fort Chambers Park area.

He integrated parts of the energetic performance into the top of the mural, which he was still in the process of creating.

He said the Main Street Deli drawing has a circus theme, one of several themes he uses for his artistic creations.

"I went to the circus as a little boy," he recalls. "I have no idea (now) what I saw, but it thrilled me, and I've been wedded to the circus since, not as a participant but as an artist."

"The (performance by) those young people, jumping around, doing their routine, they were very instrumental in how this piece has turned out," he said. "They were amazing, and they inspired me."

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Rylee Strayer glues a piece of mirror to the mural on Saturday, July 16, 2016 in downtown Chambersburg, Pa. (Photo: Noelle Haro-Gomez, Public Opinion)

By the end of the day, the mural and its acrobatic circus style theme was taking shape and covering most the deli wall, but Zagar said it will probably be mid-week before it is complete. Once the first mural is done, he and the volunteers will move to The Foundry, an arts center run by a collective of local artists.

Zagar plans to get his design drawn on that wall by the time he leaves town on Friday. He said he is confident the teams of volunteers who are bringing his first drawing to life will be skilled enough to finish the second mural on their own.

"For their part, it is not a creative thing," he said, describing it as "a skill they are learning very, very quickly."

The creative part of the project comes in deciding what theme to use and actually designing the drawing that Zagar puts on the wall with black paint. The hard work, he said, comes in cementing the varied pieces over his drawing to bring it to life.

"If it was one person (doing all the work), it would take a year of concentrated work to get this done," he said. "Here we can get it done in five days."

Zagar praised the organizers who took care of setting the project into motion well before they commissioned him to create and direct the mural project.

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Volunteers use ceramic tile and pieces of mirror to bring mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar's drawing on a wall on the north side of Main Street Deli in downtown Chambersburg to life over the weekend. Their work will continue through mid-week before they move to The Foundry and a second mural to be put on the wall there.(Photo: VICKY TAYLOR/PUBLIC OPINION)

"A team from Chambersburg came and took a three-day course from me, and they were very enthused," he said. "They learned what they needed to do to get it ready."

Back home in Chambersburg, the team led by Chambersburg Area Senior High School art teacher Holly Strayer started preparing for Zagar's arrival and the beginning of the mosaic project in downtown Chambersburg.

They put out a call for donations of tile, which they then broke into pieces to be used in the mural. When Zagar suggested using pieces of mirror interspersed among the ceramic tile, Strayer put out a call for mirror on social media, and donations rolled in.

By the time the artist got to town on Friday, the mosaic committee and its volunteers were ready to begin the project.

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Nathan Rotz, left, and Kristen Lovett work on the mural on Saturday, July, 16, 2016 in Chambersburg, Pa. (Photo: Noelle Haro-Gomez, Public Opinion)

"It's wonderful for me as an artist to see this happening... to see it develop from a concept to finished project," he said. "This is happening in the noisy hubbub of real time, real people."

Strayer says watching the project come together and the mosaic take shape over the last few days has been "awesome."

Hopefully, she said, the two mosaics inspired by Zagar's drawings will be just the first of many in Chambersburg using local talent and the skills Zagar has taught the volunteers working on the town's first two mosaics.